This is how it Feels: Activating Lived Experience in the Penal Voluntary Sector

Increasing calls for ‘nothing about us without us’ envision marginalized people as valuable and necessary contributors to policies and practices affecting them. In this paper, we examine what this type of inclusion feels like for criminalized people who share their lived experiences in penal voluntary sector organizations. Focus groups conducted in England and Scotland illustrated how this work was experienced as both safe, inclusionary and rewarding and exclusionary, shame-provoking and precarious. We highlight how these tensions of ‘user involvement’ impact criminalized individuals and compound wider inequalities within this sector. The individual, emotional and structural implications of activating lived experience, therefore, require careful consideration. We consider how the penal voluntary sector might more meaningfully and supportively engage criminalized individuals in service design and delivery. These considerations are significant for broader criminal justice and social service provision seeking to meaningfully involve those with lived experience.